CIA-spurred Iranian coup seeded Islamic hatreds

July 19, 2004|By Gary L. Olson, Special to The Morning Call - Freelance

Why is there so much anti-American sentiment within the Islamic world and beyond? It's virtually impossible to understand the rise of radical Islam today, and possible global jihad tomorrow, without some acquaintance with a seminal event which occurred in Iran in August 1953.

My sense is that the image of Iran still held by many Americans was shaped, in part, by the hostage crisis of 1979, when 52 U.S. citizens were held for 444 days in the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

At the time, few Americans knew that the hostage crisis had its genesis in events of some 25 years earlier, when the CIA overthrew the Iranian government, an act, in Stephen Kinzer's words, whose "haunting and terrible legacy" still reverberates.

Kinzer, a veteran New York Times correspondent, recently told that tale in a book reminiscent of a spy thriller. "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terrorism," reconstructs the true story of Operation Ajax, the CIA code name for its 1953 overthrow of Dr. Mohammad Mossaddeq, the extremely popular, "incorruptible," and democratically elected prime minister of Iran.

What had been Mossaddeq's unforgivable transgression? In 1951, he and a unanimous parliament nationalized the oil industry, under the heretical belief that Iran's oil resources should benefit Iran. Iran's oil had been controlled by the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum, or BP) and Iran received only a fraction of the gains.

The British, as Kinzer portrays them, had only contempt for Iranian oil workers who produced this fabulous wealth. They existed under some of the most wretched conditions on earth. After nationalization and seeing their influence disappear, the British appealed to the United States, then much loved and admired by Iranians, to remove Mossaddeq. For their part, U.S. oil company executives feared that nationalization in Iran could set a bad example for other countries in terms of maintaining foreign control of natural resources.

In Washington, Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, dispatched $1 million to the CIA station in Tehran, to use "in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossaddeq." The CIA agent who planned Operation Ajax in Iran was Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. Later described as a "real-life James Bond," Roosevelt's methods included extensive use of "grey propaganda" newspaper stories, bribery of military officers and politicians, subsidizing rioters, suitcases stuffed with cash, death threats, and outright lying to a trusting Mossaddeq.

When the coup happened, about 300 people were killed, mostly military officers and students. Mossaddeq, a towering and even iconic figure, was arrested. In his place, the United States installed the young Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne.

U.S. companies grabbed 40 percent of controlling shares in Iranian oil as part of a consortium with European companies. In the following years Washington undertook huge arms transfers to Iran and offered unstinting support to the shah's savage regime. In 1979, the shah was overthrown in a popular revolution which soon fell under the sway of Islamic radicals and ultimately a despotic clerical regime. Some readers might recall that the deposed shah, a reviled traitor in Iran, was granted asylum in this country. Iranian students, fearing the U.S. would stage another coup and reimpose the shah, seized the U.S. embassy and its occupants.

They demanded that the U.S. media air the truth about 1953 as a condition for releasing the hostages. To my knowledge no major outlets complied. Only in March 2000 did the U.S. admit its role in the overthrow of Mossaddeq's government.

The CIA is proud of its "success" in Iran, the first of numerous CIA overthrows of sovereign governments. However, because Mossaddeq epitomized the idea of democratic self-rule, Washington conveyed the message that the United States preferred dictatorships and favorable access to resources over any commitment to promoting democracy.

Kinzer contends, "It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the shah's repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York." That is, a radical Iranian theocracy served as an inspiration to extremists in neighboring Afghanistan "where the Taliban came to power and gave sanctuary to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden."

The CIA term for these unwelcome consequences is "blowback," the retaliation and revenge for earlier acts that come back to haunt the perpetrators. As Iran and the recent occupation of Iraq demonstrate, U.S. foreign policy often resembles an international incubation program that both births and nourishes embryonic hatreds -- and recruits for terrorism -- thus creating a more perilous world for our citizens.

Gary L. Olson, Ph.D., is chair of the political science department at Moravian College in Bethlehem. His e-mail address is olson@moravian.edu